Job market not what it used to be for returnees

Editor's note: A survey shows about 30 percent of returnees with foreign degrees are not satisfied with their first job, whose average monthly income is about 7,000 yuan ($1,043), comparable to the wage of their domestic counterparts, and about 27 percent of sampled employers think the returnees have grandiose aims but puny abilities. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

Since 1978, about 4 million Chinese have studied overseas, and about 80 percent of them have made their way back to their homeland after graduation. Particularly in the 1980s and the 1990s, many returnees became productive professionals in their respective fields.

That has cast deep influence on the attitude of many Chinese toward foreign degree holders, who are supposed to stay abroad living a well-off life, or return to lead a better remunerated life than their domestically educated peers.